Word processing and other authoring software applications may include a substantial library of fonts from which documents can be authored. A given document may include text formatted in one or more different fonts. These fonts may be stored in files that contain glyphs, characters, symbols, and a variety of other information for displaying text in a certain way. In order to properly display the document text, a document viewing application may need to access to the appropriate font files.
A web browser is a common tool for viewing documents shared over the World Wide Web (“web”). Conventional web browsers display documents authored in HyperText Markup Language (“HTML”). However, because HTML provides only limited document formatting capability as compared to conventional authoring applications, documents converted from their native format into HTML generally lose layout and other visual information. Thus, an HTML-converted document displayed on a web browser may look significantly different from the original document displayed on the authoring software application. Web browsers may also be capable of displaying additional document formats, such as ADOBE FLASH and MICROSOFT SILVERLIGHT.
Web browsers typically do not include font files. Thus, a web browser may need to obtain one or more font files prior to displaying a given document. However, these font files can be large, such as those for Latin languages, and even extremely large, especially for East Asian languages. Downloading large fonts can negatively affect document load time because the web browser is forced to wait until the necessary font files have been downloaded prior to displaying the document. Increased download times can cause significant frustration with users who desire on-demand viewing of documents.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the disclosure made herein is presented.